Güd wrtr

Actually, from where we sit,
on the patio in the warm
(southern) California sun,
we see at least 20 shaggy heads
rising high into the blue
on long columns, their
pendulous leaflets swinging
freely in the merest breeze.

The seven closest seem
perfectly arranged, a small
choir of California fan palms
singing their hallelujahs
and hosannas, their
fronds huddled at the top,
an open crown pointing
skyward—

not of thorns but
of life-giving green
fanning the quiet, as we
sit and listen to this day
we’ve been given,
one overseen by wise
ones like these, beloveds
we cannot see, whispering,
peace, sweet peace, and
goodwill to all.

I said some words to the close and holy darkness,
and then I slept.
—from A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas

In that close and holy darkness,
yours,
may memories arise in dream form:

the wool-white bell-tongued ball
of holidays resting at the rim
of the carol-singing sea,

in a long ago, faraway place
that lives uniquely in you, one
that arrives in sleep:

the Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen
in the muffling silence of the eternal snows…

birds the color of red-flannel petticoats
[that] whisked past the harp-shaped hills…

the stories re-given, as you knew them then:

…snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses
like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely ivied
the walls and settled on the postman,
opening the gate, like a dumb, numb
thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards
over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills…

You see the useful presents, the useless presents,
the uncles and, not least: …
Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound
back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush.

You once again with your pals who have
not aged, have not passed into mystery,
are as alive as new leaves, which lie still
under bare branches for a while yet.

You remember the words to “Good King
Wenceslas” and his feast of Stephen, and sing,
your children’s voices high and seemingly
distant in the snow-felted darkness.

It comes to you that everything was good
again and shone over the town…

which, with luck, you will bring with
you from the close and holy darkness
into wakefulness,

grateful for the lasting gifts.

(Words in italics from Dylan Thomas’ short story, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”
You can hear a 1952 recording of Dylan Thomas reading the story here.)

for Sue and Donna
and our parents

Look what I found:
pages from our childhood
bible, the one that arrived
in fall and we pored over
for weeks, working (at least
in theory) on Christmas lists
that we’d present to parents
with our eternal hope—

pages selling trolls (not troll
dolls, as our parents called them—
to us they were real characters
to whom we gave names and
backstories).

And here are the Matchbox cars,
likewise with names and biographies,
the Kiddles, tiny dolls (OK, sure)
wearing tiny outfits. Remember
the girl with the guitar and mic
stand, her long blond hair swinging
behind her as she sang?

And one of us must have
requested a kids’ record player
because we certainly each
had one, which was how we
listened to our cousins’ 45s
they passed on to us—

the “Flying Purple People Eater”
debuted the year I was born—
graduating to Snoopy vs. the Red Baron
to Herman’s Hermits and the Beatles,
eventually to Barry Manilow
and John Denver.

I never got the kids’ typewriter
I requested, on which I might
have batted out any number
of stories and poems—though
my parents got me a dandy
Smith-Corona electric when I
graduated from high school.

But look, you guys, at what our
little hearts desired more than
a half century ago, what fed our
imaginations, what helped us
grow into women of substance
and character, what we wished for—
so much of it not from the Sears
Wish Book—

that we so blessedly were given.

(See many vintage catalogs)

Twin Palms / Palm Springs

They’re everywhere here,
flitting about so fast
I mistook them for butterflies
the first days I walked
the neighborhood. But if
you pause, wait, you might
see one land.

After a day spent in bed, felled
by something (not that thing)
that seized me, shook me and
unceremoniously dropped me,
when I finally rose to eat a bit,
I stepped outside to the patio
under three leggy palms and
next to a lemon tree lush
with yellow orbs.

Taking a seat, I saw the hummer
flitting about the blossom-less
tree—no food there—but offering
a handy perch for the wee bird,
which, like a tiny Peter Pan, hovered, 
forward and back, before landing
on a slender branch. Momentarily
stilled, it looked down at me, 
head shifting every few seconds,
left, right, down, needle beak
occasionally pointing skyward,

and we gazed at each other 
for a few minutes, its little heart
outpacing mine by about a
thousand beats per minute.
And when a noise startled
the tiny iridescent missile, 
it arrowed up into the blue, 

off to find the next blossom,
always on the move, difficult
for mere humans to see, but
making this one feel a bit
lighter, which is, after all,
part of their charm.

said the hand-written sign
in a shop in the old movie-set

western town, and I looked closely
to see what I might identify,

not being well-versed in anatomy,
and then I thought, I hope these

came from animals, as I detected
bleached vertebrae and ribs,

possibly large teeth, maybe
part of a femur? and I thought,

deer? elk? But I didn’t want to ask
the bearded proprietor outside

on the porch chatting with
an older man who looked as if

he could’ve been an extra in
one of the westerns shot there,

so I settled for a commemorative
magnet instead, and, as my pardner

and I moseyed down the dusty street
of the mostly deserted desert town,

past sculptural Joshua trees reaching
for the heavens, it struck me that

we are animals, too, all of us
bipedal primate mammals,

whose roughly 206 bones
might fetch a bit over $1,000

if we were neatened up and
parted out like the holy relics

we are all destined to become.

Who put them there? I asked
the postmistress of Pioneertown
on the afternoon of the winter solstice.

I meant the old typewriters rusting
into artifacts in the old West-movie set town,
placed by someone more than a decade earlier
atop kids’ small desks, the kind with attached
seats found in schoolrooms of my youth.

The postmistress of Pioneertown, in the high
desert of the San Bernardino mountains,
had to think for a moment. We’d driven
from Palm Springs to see if we could find
the ghost typewriters that turned out to
sit listing behind a rickety picket fence
on deteriorating desks with rusty wells
where their chairs once perched.

Linda set them out there, she said, but
before I could ask, Linda who? a man came
through the door, packages in hand.
So we thanked the postmistress in her
genuine P.O. in its weathered, faux
wild West building, and ambled down
the wide, dusty street that once welcomed
camera dollies and crews and actors,
a living, breathing movie set.

Where Gene Autry filmed his weekly
cowboy show and where Roy Rogers
opened the Pioneer Bowl in 1946 with
a strike on lane 1, bowling a 211 game
in his cowboy boots, and where Mrs. White
served as the first postmistress when
the P.O. lived inside the bowling alley.

We paused again at the typewriters,
so I could call their names—Remington,
Smith-Corona, Royal, Underwood—
paying homage to the fingers that once
pressed those keys, as I do now on
a newfangled typing machine that will
one day be as obsolete as these
magnificent dinosaurs, their typed words
as transitory as the high desert wind.

in a warm place… well, warmer than home,
where, on the shortest day, we understand
it’s doing a fine imitation of winter—
the kind of winter we get, which is to say,
cold and dreary and gray, cold enough
for snow but sea-level elevation to prevent it.

So that fleeing for a time to the southland
of my native state feels like a holiday,
appropriately on the third day of Hanukkah,
heading toward Christmas and Kwanzaa
and a new year, December miracles
in a place where I can comfortably don
lightweight summer pants that reach
my calves and tennies with tiny socks that
barely reach my ankles,

and in only a T-shirt and sunglasses and hat
walk and walk through a mid-century modern
neighborhood, taking in low-slung houses
with butterfly roofs and angled turquoise
mailboxes like the one my father attached
to a 4×4 for my mother in the mid-’60s
after they moved north and set down new
roots by a lake called Folsom.

I am from this latitude, or close enough,
born about 100 miles west near an ocean,
but I’ve spent most of my life inland,
missing the sea. Perhaps that’s one reason
water has long called me—from the lake
out the front door and down the path
in my youth to a high school pool in my teens,
to a tropical ocean as an adult—any warm,
swimmable, snorkel-able, easy water.

I like easy, the ease of, after the walk
under the palms, admiring the San Jacinto
mountains to the west, slipping into
a suit that hugs me like an old friend,
then into the warmth of a champagne
cork-shaped pool for solo laps,
rolling over on the back to float,
look up at the bluest sky, smiling,
grateful for all that holds me.

for the first time—woo hoo!—
and though no one in the family
wanted to ask, we were quietly
hoping/wondering/imagining

what it might be like to have
a baby in the family again since
the last baby is now 32 and
a middle school band teacher
with a very sweet wife,

and the first baby is now 35,
my niece who’s gonna
have the first baby
of our next generation—
perhaps the only baby
of our next generation—
with her sweet husband,

and when she texted (as
the kids do) to request
a phone call with Aunt Jan,
I had no idea what she
wanted to chat about,

this baby born on my
29^th birthday, so she
surprised the bejesus
out of me when she said,
You’re gonna be a great aunt!

and I said (using an old line
between us), I’m already
a great aunt, and she
laughed and said, yes,
you are, but you’re gonna be

a Great Aunt, and then there
was talk about how far along
and due dates and names
she’s long loved and general
excitement—woo hoo!—

and all that adds up to
the fact that my little sister’s
gonna be a grandma,
and her husband’s gonna
be a grandpa, and I swear
it was just last week they
were getting married, and
a few years later announcing
their first baby-to-be,

the one who called
with the good, good news—
woo-hoo!—a new tiny
mammal will join our
little family in June!

tonight, beginning the festival of lights,
in tribute to friends and beloveds who
celebrate, honoring those rebellious
Maccabees, who reclaimed, cleansed
and rededicated the temple, then relit
the single candle that continuously
burned for eight days.

It is that miracle and others I praise
on these darkening days, on one that
dawned foggy and still. It is those latkes
and jelly doughnuts I crave, and will
find, heading south to a warmer land

where my beloved and I will holiday
with, among other blessings, a superb
Jewish deli, the delights of Hanukkah
and Christmas together, and give thanks
for traditions so graciously shared.

And I will take a candle or two with me
to light and burn and joyfully partake
of potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts
and thank the heavens for friends and
family, all that I’ve been given, such
glorious abundance.

(Photo courtesy of hebcal.com)

Two weeks ago it stopped,
mid-cycle, as we aging machines
can do, and flashed a two-word
mystery at me:

Pump block?

How should I know? I said.
But the washer ignored me,
flashing its persistent message
until I turned its knob to off.

I asked Leaman, the handyman,
who grinned sympathetically
as he wrestled with my dishwasher
and told me where to call. One
appliance at a time, he said.

So I did, and the appliance gods
delivered Adam, who, once shown
to the machine, plopped himself
and his puffy red beard in the tight
corner between washer and wall
and set to work, so focused he could’ve
been fine tuning a moon-bound orbiter,
one of which splashed down several
days ago—mission accomplished.

Which is what I told Adam after he
masterfully unblocked the pump
and carefully removed the small lake
in the washer, not spilling a drop,
which, as far as I’m concerned,
makes him a pro, one whom NASA
should consider hiring.

The man’s got wicked good skills.